Others will tell you about their experiences but I want, only, to encourage you both to not try and forecast the future. It's a losing chore which will only make for more anxiety; keep the focus on learing how to manage what is on your plate now.
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J Headache Pain. 2005 Feb;6(1):3-9. Epub 2005 Jan 25.

Chronic cluster headache: a review.

Favier I, Haan J, Ferrari MD.

Department of Neurology, K5-Q Leiden University Medical Centre, 9600, 2300 RC Leiden, The Netherlands.

Cluster headache (CH) is a rare but severe headache disorder characterised by repeated unilateral head pain attacks accompanied by ipsilateral autonomic features. In episodic CH, there are periods of headache attacks with pain-free intervals of weeks, months or years in between. A minority of patients have the chronic form, without pain-free intervals between the headache attacks. Chronic CH can occur as primary or secondary chronic CH; the rarest form is episodic CH arising from chronic CH. In this article, we give a review of the chronic forms of CH and focus on demographics, clinical manifestations, social habits, predictive factors, head injury, genetics, neuroimaging and therapy. IT IS REMARKABLE THAT LITTLE IS KNOWN ABOUT RISK FACTORS THAT MAKE CH CHRONIC.

Publication Types:
Review

PMID: 16362185 [PubMed] 

What Bob and Lance said. 33 year episodic sufferer, still not chronic!

And do look at either getting your doc to get a little more aggressive in his treatment plan, get a new doc, or maybe even consider going to the "dark side"... ....visit our sister board for alternatives to main stream medicine. Go in with an open mind, meet the people who have succesfully used these techniques to get pain free, and see if it might work for you. Some of my best friends on this board are pain free going this route. And they were some of the worst off cases.

Clusterbusters.com

Thanks for supporting my CH brother. Don't think I would have made it 33 years without the wifey helping me along.

Joe

Hi Lori,

So sorry that your husband is hurting.

I went from episodic to chronic last year.  My attack got progressively worse over the year.  Spring and summer were not too bad, but then fall hit and things got much worse for me.  Then at the beginning of November my meds lost thier effectiveness.  Even massive doses of prednisone wouldn't work.  So I did the unthinkable, I went off of ALL my meds for two weeks.  It was it's own little version of hell.  Then I got my Oxygen and things became bearable.  I started the D3 regimen and then went back on my meds.  They worked this time.  I have been pain free for three weeks now.  That is the first time in over a year that I have had that much PF time.

So between the Oxygen, Prednisone taper, D3 regimen and verapamil I finally got some relief.  I was like you and your husband, deathly afraid of turning chronic.  I wholeheartedly believe that going off my meds for a short while "reset" their effectiveness.

Is your husband on any meds?  has he seen a doctor or neurologist?  do you have any O2?

My 2 cents is get some oxygen asap.  even if you have to get a welding set up for it.  It made a HUGE difference for me.  I can abort a HA in minutes and it keeps the intensity down as well.

I also take the D3 regimen but I take a higher dosage of 30,000 IU of D3 and 1000 mg of calcium per day.

Take care and there is hope for your husband of knocking the beast back down again.  I did it, he can too...

All the best,

John

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I second this.  Or third or fourth it.   There is no need to even think about going chronic at this point.  Some do...MOST don't.  To worry about it is totally fruitless.